What does impossible look like?

Not much after just wolfing down the last piece of my birthday cake (poppy seed chiffon backed with much love by my wife), bring on the world! I may be 50 years old, but I’m not dead yet so people are still going to have to put up with me and my weird and "wonderful" ideas for a while.

My 50th Birthday Christmas party shared with Keren's (a nurse who has served for 10 months) farewell

This past Sunday the week launched with the Mozambican leaders heading back to their homes after intensive training to face a lot of situations that I am sure look impossible. The day was then filled with the trip to Chimoio to meet a Mercy Air team arriving with guests from the UK. New people visiting are always a lot of fun (and some work). Introducing them to our world makes us aware of how much God has enabled us to do to this point, but it also makes us aware of how crazy some of the things we are trying to do sound like to people from another world. I am very aware that some of the things we are trying to do would be relatively easy in a developed country, but transplant that project here and…well there are days they start to look close to impossible.

We walked the team up across the bridge “under construction” to the site of the airstrip “under construction.” And as we checked out the area cleared for the hangar (already donated in the USA), I explained how I had searched for the right site, how Ron Wayner and Nate (another pilot) and I walked the route through the thick bush and determined it should be level enough, and then how we had started the tedious time-consuming task of de-bushing by hand. I explained to the team how I actually picked up the written approval from the Mozambique transport department to go ahead with construction (a miracle in itself). Rose, the leader of the group kind of stepped out and looking down the de-bushed but still very uneven stretch of land and said, “I can really SEE this being an airstrip.”

And that for me determines what possible looks like and as a result what impossible also looks like; impossible is simply something you don’t have the ability, willingness, creativity, or faith to “SEE”. So impossible is the way things look today with no one willing to take action by God’s grace, power and provision to change them or at least to SEE them from a better perspective.

And it is hard to SEE the things the way they could be or the way they should be. As we battled for almost 3 months to find a clutch for our truck to carry on the critical work on the training center and other projects, there were moments it looked like there would be no change. But with a number of us persistently looking for the solution, it came when Rick was able to find the right clutch in South Africa! And the truck is BACK, and working hard to help us achieve other projects (like the training center) that have also sometimes seemed impossible.

This week the “thatchers” (the guys that tie down and then beat the grass into place) completed their work on the roof of a meeting area/rest area in the camp site which is going to bring blessing and refreshing to many short termers. This has been long in coming, and although it is not finished yet (kind of like most things around here), it is looking beautiful.

Peter our brick layer and his assistant decided that since other projects were awaiting the truck, he would work on a few long needed finishing touches on the campsite kitchen and bathroom. So he has put in sidewalk and a step where there use to be an eroded ditch that threatened the survival of short termers trying to get to the kitchen in the dark. Now it is soo much better.

All ready for more people to come and SEE what will be possible so that peoples’ lives are changed and empowered in this amazing yet challenging country.